


Everybody Wants to Rule the World

by weakinteraction



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cold War, F/F, POV Alternating, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:01:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: 1990, in a world where things went rather differently in Berlin. Delphine made it out alive, but Lorraine has far more loose ends to tie up.
Relationships: Lorraine Broughton/Delphine Lasalle
Comments: 22
Kudos: 101
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kototyph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/gifts).



_Delphine_

Delphine went back to Berlin seven weeks later.

After her recall, after the long, arduous debriefing, they offered her another assignment. Her choice, they told her -- a desk job in Paris, or an attaché post somewhere far away, Canada or Madagascar or Japan. Somewhere well away from the awful memories, somewhere where she couldn't cause too much trouble.

When she said no, she wanted to remain in her post, they made her attend therapy. She chainsmoked her way through the sessions, bit her nails to the quick before each one. But she must have said all the right things, even while the gently probing questions were reawakening all the worst parts of her memories, as though they didn't march through her dreams every night.

_Percival's face, angry and snarling._

_His back; the way it resisted her desperate, frenzied stabbing, the sheer force she had to use._

_His blood, the sheer volume of it, the way it just spread and spread and spread, a pool gushing over the floor._

_His face again, staring up at the ceiling, completely dead._

In the dreams, Lorraine didn't feature. Awake, she could at least add the postscript: the way she had swept into the apartment, gun levelled, just moments too late. But Delphine had rescued herself. It was only as Lorraine explained -- that Percival was Satchel, that he had tried to kill Delphine because she had got too close -- that she realised how much trouble she had been in.

And yet. He was still another human being, and she had killed him. It had always been a possibility. She had trained for just such an eventuality: the most effective techniques, not that they had done her much good in the moment. The therapist kept telling her that it had been self-defence, and the nightmare memories said the same: mixed with the horror of his death was the horror of his attack on her.

Some of her superiors disapproved of her choice to return to her old post, she could tell. She wasn't ready. She couldn't cope. She'd caused enough trouble already.

But André had the final say. He had looked at all of it: her report, the psychological evaluations, the evidence shared by MI6. She expected some words of warning, or encouragement. But all he said was, "There is unfinished business here. Make sure you finish it."

And so Delphine was in Berlin again, having spent just a few days at home for Christmas. If her parents had noticed anything wrong with her, they had been too wrapped up in the slow-motion dissolution of their marriage to say anything. Her brother had spent the whole time scheming ways to get away and fuck his new girlfriend. The night before she left, Delphine had seduced her -- partly, she thought, just to see if she could. She had realised halfway through their wordless encounter that she was using many of the same moves Lorraine had used on her, back in that hotel room in Berlin, the thought of which only turned her on more.

Now here she was, walking through the streets on her way back from the disreputable New Year's Eve party she had half-gatecrashed, half-organised. The wall still stood in many places, but it was no longer an effective barrier. Decades of division and terror were over.

It was the 1990s now. A new decade. A new Berlin. A new Delphine.

* * *

_Lorraine_

Belgrade had always been different. A good place to do business, back in the day. Yugoslavia's anomalous status -- communist, but not aligned with the Warsaw Pact -- had made it a crossroads, a place where East and West could come into closer contact than most others.

Now, though, as she sat across from David, in the same small café that had always met in when she had been stationed here in the early '80s, she could see in his face what she'd felt in the streets, watching the TV in her room. The end of the Cold War was going to play out differently here; the fragile sense of Yugoslav identity -- as much about the cult of personality around Tito as anything else, Tito who was now a decade in the ground -- fracturing, giving way to older faultlines that lay underneath it.

Still, it was a shock to hear David say directly, "Yugoslavia is over." He looked at her as though expecting a response. "And so is Satchel."

David had been one of the very few people who had known at least some of the overall shape of the long-term operation. He'd stumbled on a few things, and she'd taken him into her confidence to avoid him drawing even worse conclusions. Perhaps if she'd done the same with his British namesake, things would have gone differently. Then again, perhaps not.

"There are a few details left to tie up, that's all." She forced confidence into her voice. Berlin had gone wrong in almost every conceivable way. She hadn't had the chance to plant the evidence she needed to, and Spyglass had simply disappeared -- whether escaping on his own in the chaos, or falling victim to a final revenge of the Stasi, there was no way to tell.

"You need to be more careful."

"You didn't use a dead drop you had no way to be sure was still being monitored to talk about Satchel," Lorraine said.

"No, you're right, I didn't." He took a sip, then looked her straight in the eye. "There's something that I think your employers should know about."

"Which ones?"

"I'll leave that up to you to decide," David said. "Perhaps you might finally decide to join the ranks of us freelancers, I don't know."

"Tell me what you have," Lorraine said.

"The Soviet nuclear programme," David said. "You must know it has been experiencing difficulties."

"Chernobyl was pretty hard to miss," Lorraine said.

"A tragedy," David said soberly. "But I'm not talking about the civilian programme." He lowered his voice. "Scientists -- military scientists -- are not being paid. There's a lot of that about, mind you. But some of them are deciding to help themselves to ... valuable material."

Lorraine felt sceptical. "Surely if they're working for the military--"

"You think a Red Army conscript knows enriched uranium from any other shiny lump of metal? And it's not as though they're not starving too," David went on. "The ones who do figure it out are easily bought off."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"The GRU have -- belatedly -- caught onto the problem. They're doing a full audit of all sites."

"Their problem, they're dealing with it. Sounds good to me."

"Except that the audit is going to be completely false. The team putting it together has figured out the same thing the scientists did. They're putting together two sets of data -- one for their bosses, and one, the true one, for sale to the highest bidder via their new friends in the underworld." David raised a finger, wagging it for emphasis. "But there will be a copy of the true audit, which I know how you can get."

"How? How do you know all this?"

"It's my job to know these things. But deciding what to do about something this big? That, that is definitely not my job. Not my responsibility."

"That's why you got me back here."

"That's why I got you back here," David said. "Let the KGB know if you want -- they'd love to get one up on the GRU, wouldn't they? Or get the CIA to outbid everyone and take it off the market. Or have the Brits do something frightfully clever, old chum." She stifled a giggle at David's sudden cut-glass accent. "I don't care."

"It's sweet that you think I do."

"Like I said, go freelance if you want. I. Don't. Care."

"How do I get the copy?"

David picked up his napkin and started scribbling.

"This is months from now," Lorraine said.

"The audit isn't finished yet," David said. "Either version. But when it is, this is how you get the truth." He spread his hands wide. "Think of it this way. You have plenty of time to decide what to do."

* * *

_Delphine_

It was one of the first mild days of March, but Delphine was barely aware of the outside world any more. She had stumbled upon Percival's primary safehouse, a treasure trove of evidence. If she hadn't killed him, he would almost certainly have destroyed this place before letting it potentially slip out of his control in the chaotic events of that night.

In amongst everything else were recordings. It made sense; Lorraine had said that he had loved the sound of his own voice.

She wondered whether she would see Lorraine again. The informal whisper network that operated among the intelligence community had it that she was on assignment in Yugoslavia, but who knew whether that was deliberate misinformation, planted for one reason or another. She wanted to show her what she had found.

That lasted as long as the third tape.

_"If you're hearing this, then I'm dead. Who knows, perhaps you killed me. I hope if you did I made it bloody difficult for you."_

_A pause: the sound of a cigarette being ground out, another one lit._

_"The thing is, Berlin is everywhere, or at least the only place that's important. The whole of the Cold War in microcosm, an itty bitty recreation of the world stage, and the fuse that could ignite the whole thing. That's why the List is so important. By rights, no one on either side should be able to collect all that information together. No one who wasn't playing_ both _sides, or at least was working with someone who was. And anyone who was involved in that sort of thing would practically be blowing their cover by even starting to compile it._

_"But without the List, Berlin would have exploded years ago, and the whole bloody world would have gone up in flames around it._

_"So, let's talk about Satchel."_

* * *

_Lorraine_

Lorraine walked into the tapas bar at the time given on the napkin David had written so many months ago. It was a relief to get inside from the summer air, still stifling at ten o'clock at night.

"I have a reservation," she said politely.

There was a considerable amount of confusion at the front desk, until one of the waiters swept in from near the kitchen, calmed his colleagues, and bundled her away to a table right at the back. "You are dining alone tonight, madam, yes?" he said, his English lightly accented, but not with the sorts of inflections she'd grown used to hearing since arriving in Barcelona.

"I guess I am," Lorraine said.

"Here is _your_ menu," he said. "You should study it carefully before you order." He straightened up. "Would you care for a drink while you decide, madam?"

"Just some water," Lorraine said, already beginning to pore over the menu. "Thank you."

This place was clearly catering to the international market; the plastic-laminated menu had detailed descriptions of each dish in English, French and German as well as Spanish. The translations weren't always great, and the punctuation was inconsistent at best. It was only on her third pass through that her eye was caught by the menu that was already on the table and she realised that for one item -- the patatas bravas -- her menu _did_ have the period that was missing from the other.

A fucking microdot. They were slipping her a fucking microdot.

Smuggling the menu card out of the restaurant wasn't easy; she had to resort to visiting the bathroom and sliding it down the back of her blouse. But when she returned to her hotel room she quickly discovered that the information it contained was, if anything, even more explosive than David had claimed.

Now there was just one more loose end to tie up, and then she had a decision to make.

* * *

_Delphine_

Barcelona was sweltering in the summer heat.

Officially, Delphine had taken this as a break, coming to see the Madonna concert. Only André knew she had other reasons for being here, and she hadn't even told him the whole truth about what they were. This was an unofficial operation, something she was running herself. Off the books, deniable by everyone, not something she'd necessarily share the full facts of with anyone even if it did come off.

Very much the sort of thing Percival had spent his time doing, she reflected. Months of listening to his voice on the tapes had changed her feelings towards him. He _had_ tried to kill her, and even if it was true that he was never Satchel, he had still been up to his neck in everything and anything that went on in the underworld in both East and West Berlin.

As was Lorraine, on a wider scale. Delphine still wasn't sure; part of her wanted to give Lorraine the benefit of the doubt, hear her side of the story, even though everything Percival said made clear that she couldn't trust her.

So here she was in Barcelona, where a tip-off she trusted about 60% said that Lorraine was likely to be. It turned out to be reliable, though; she made her at the airport and tailed her for a day and a half of tourist activities, not that the city made that terribly easy for its visitors. In two years' time, the Olympics would be here, and as cranes sprouted from construction sites all over the city, some of the more forward-thinking businesses had started to get ready for what they would bring, but the city as a whole was still recovering from decades of neglect, punishment for its resistance to the Franco regime.

Lorraine must be establishing her cover, Delphine thought. Or she'd made some sort of drop that Delphine had failed to notice, maybe even had some sort of surreptitious contact in amongst the crowds.

One and a half days and nothing to show for it. And then, even worse, she'd lost her.

Two hours after that: "This is a bad place to do business."

Lorraine's voice in her ear, close behind her as she made her way back into the apartment she'd taken out a short-term rental on, ready to try to re-establish contact the next day.

"What do you mean?" Delphine asked, pulling her inside and closing the door behind them. Already knowing that Lorraine has the upper hand, for the moment at least.

"The history," Lorraine said, putting one hand on Delphine's hip from behind her. An atavistic memory pulled at Delphine unwillingly, of bucking on top of Lorraine as that same hand slid just a little further round ... "The current events." Lorraine's other hand, grabbing her ass. "Everyone here is on edge for at least three different reasons all at once. What's yours?"

"I'm just here to enjoy myself," Delphine said, sticking with the cover story. "Pleasure, not business."

"That's why you've been following me everywhere, is it?"

"Don't know what you're talking about," Delphine said.

And then they were kissing, Lorraine pressing her back against the wall, pulling at her clothes. Delphine let Lorraine overwhelm her, even took the not-so-subtle hint to drop to her knees, making sure she looked up at Lorraine with her best expression of ardent submission as she licked her to orgasm.

It was only when they got to the bedroom that she began to take control, little by little, so that Lorraine would just see it as a lover's game, Delphine trying something new. Lorraine was stronger than her, she knew that; she would be able to escape easily if she really put her mind to it. So she had to make sure that she was distracted.

Kneeling above Lorraine, one hand pressing down on her chest, the other stroking her frantically, Delphine brought her to another climax.

Sweaty, the sheets tangled underneath her, Lorraine looked as though, just for a moment, she was relaxed.

"You know, I take back what I said," Delphine said.

"What did you say?" Lorraine murmured.

"When we first met," Delphine went on. "When I said you weren't as good at this spy shit as you thought. It turns out you're very good, doesn't it?" Delphine smiled. "Satchel."

Lorraine's eyes flicked open, instantly alert. But in the same moment, Delphine had retrieved the gun from the nightstand and levelled it, aiming right between Lorraine's eyes. The sticky heat of their bodies was suddenly cooled, the tension of the confrontation giving both of them involuntary goosebumps.

"You're not going to shoot me," Lorraine said.

"If you don't want to test that, don't move a single fucking muscle," Delphine said.

Lorraine moved her hands across the sheets, from the way they had been strewn above her head to more of a conventional surrender gesture. "I guess you think I'm going to tell you everything. And then what? You'll take your revenge? You'll report me to my masters?"

"Which ones?"

"Ah, well, yes, that's exactly it, sweetheart." Delphine took a moment to realise that her accent had changed completely. "I have to give you credit for working out that I'm a double agent -- I assume you had a little help, there. Percival reaching out from beyond the grave, the bastard. I'm right, aren't I? I know you went back to Berlin."

Delphine nodded minutely, fingers tightening around the stock of her gun.

"It's all true. I mean, probably not in the detail, David always was sloppy. But I was working for both MI6 and the KGB. But did it ever occur to you that I could be a _triple_ agent?"

* * *

_Lorraine_

The morning after what had turned out to be an unexpectedly fun night, once she'd persuaded Delphine that she had been on the side of the angels all along --even if she herself couldn't be sure of it at this stage -- she found herself being tailed by much less pleasant company.

At first, it just seemed as though the streets were full of young men, barely more than boys really, on bikes who liked to show off and rev their engines too hard, but when she'd seen the same one reappear five blocks further along her route, she realised it was something more sinister.

She started to take random turns, trying to throw them off. But even when she sprinted down an alleyway, another bike was there within moments.

She needed to get off the streets, make it harder for them to follow her.

Up ahead was the construction site for the Olympic Village. She sprinted towards the fence around it, launching herself up and managing to grab onto it halfway up. The nearest bike skidded into a wall as its rider jumped off, immediately pulling a gun.

Lorraine scrambled to the top of the fence and swung over it. She glanced downwards, trying to judge if she could land safely. When the gunman's first shot pinged off the fencing only inches away, she decided that she had to take the risk.

Landing badly, she ran as best she could on her twisted ankle into the half-finished housing. Behind her were shouts, orders being given hurriedly. Then the revving of motorbikes again, as some of the party made to cut her off.

This whole operation had gone to shit, possibly even more so than Berlin. That was if it even counted as an operation, given that she hadn't told anyone what she was doing here, and still hadn't decided what she was going to do with the data.

She pulled out her own gun and flattened herself against the concrete slabs that would some day soon be the wall of an accommodation block.

"We know you have it!" came a shout. The accent was Russian, Muscovite if she didn't miss her guess. "Return it now and we'll let you live."

That seemed unlikely.

She crept along the wall to a point where it hadn't been built up to its full height yet; darting up for a moment, she fired twice, the shots echoing around.

The reply came in a sustained barrage of fire at her improvised shelter. She crouched down, minimising her profile.

Then, there was another, different bullet sound -- higher pitched, staccato. One shot, two. A third.

A fucking sniper.

Except ... Any sniper worth their salt should have had her by then.

She risked another peek over her makeshift parapet. Three bodies of the motorbike thugs lay flat on the floor, precise bullet holes through their chests.

Lorraine got up properly, walked over to the bodies to examine them. Nothing identifying at all, but she'd bet even money that they were from the Russian gang who were supposed to be the only recipient of her information.

Which just left the question of her saviour's identity, one that was answered a few minutes later when one of the bikes appeared with a familiar figure riding it, a backpack just large enough to fit a disassembled sniper rifle slung over her shoulders.

Delphine took off the too-large helmet she'd taken from the previous owner and shook out her hair.

"You?" Lorraine said.

"Me," Delphine confirmed.

"But ..."

"But what?"

"You were a mess after you killed Percival," Lorraine said. "It was your first time, wasn't it? But this--"

"You're welcome, by the way," Delphine said. "For the life-saving."

Lorraine gestured at the bodies. "We need to clean up," she said. "Certainly before work starts here again on Monday morning."

"I called it in to the US Consulate," Delphine said. "There's a ... code we know. Probably out of date, but--" She looked at Lorraine through narrowed eyes. "This was a CIA-sanctioned op, right?"

"Right."

"'Cos the reason I called it in to your guys and not ours is that I'm here strictly unofficially. Once I found out about ..."

"Satchel," Lorraine finished. "You can say the word out of the bedroom, you know."

"I didn't know who might or might not be compromised."

"No," Lorraine said. "I can see that."

As she said it, she thought: we're all compromised, each and every one of us.

But if everything went south, it wouldn't do any harm for that to be _completely_ obvious to anyone investigating.

"Let me take you out to dinner," Lorraine said. "Would that be gratitude enough?"

* * *

_Delphine_

Dinner turned out to be at a tapas place with good, but overpriced, food and where one of the waiters seemed to be glaring at them throughout the evening, as though he didn't think they should be there.

"What will you do now?" Delphine asked after she'd eaten enough to satisfy the considerable appetite the day's events had worked up.

"I can't go back to London," Lorraine said. "Thanks to you."

"Again, you're welcome. I'll definitely save your life again some time, the gratitude is really overwhelming."

Lorraine ignored her. "So I guess it's back to the US."

Delphine realised that her accent had switched as she had said it. "Is that the real you?" she said. "I'm not sure I like it."

"You don't have to."

"So ... you won't be in Europe any more," Delphine said. "Pity."

"Yes," Lorraine said. "It is. There are lots of things I'll miss." Her eyes were wide, filled with smoky lust. Her intention to seduce Delphine -- or, at least, go along with Delphine's attempt to seduce her -- was clear, just not the intention behind the intention. But as Lorraine's suddenly shoeless foot slid up her leg, she found she didn't care.

Back in Lorraine's hotel room, they barely made it through the door before falling on each other. They clawed desperately at one another's clothes, each newly exposed piece of skin being explored avidly, until Delphine found herself pushed against the wall, Lorraine's fingers bringing her to the first of many orgasms.

She woke before the dawn light. Checking that Lorraine was still asleep, she quickly moved through the room, looking for anything useful. She quickly came across a menu from the restaurant they'd just visited.

Now why would Lorraine have kept that?

* * *

_Lorraine_

Langley hadn't changed since she'd last been here. Or she thought not. She hadn't had an office with a view the last time, certainly not one on the top floor. But the sparse, snow-covered trees stretching in all directions around the site in the December chill certainly seemed familiar.

_She'd met Kurzfeld the next morning, at the top of one of the half-completed towers of the Sagrada Familia. He'd picked the rendezvous. Another incomplete edifice, not yet open to the public, but in many ways the polar opposite of the Olympic Village where it had all happened. This was no quick project, but something which had already been a century in the making._

_"I just want my life back. I want Satchel to be_ over _."_

_"So what, you think this was a retirement plan?" Kurzfeld brandished the flimsy plastic menu, looking as though he was about to explode with rage, laughter or perhaps both. "Most people don't fill their 401(k) with nuclear secrets."_

_We're not most people."_

_"Exactly. We don't get to retire." Kurzfeld jabbed a finger at her. "Satchel_ is _over," he said. "Time for you to get what you deserve."_

_He peered over the edge, and for a horrible vertiginous moment Lorraine thought that he might be considering pushing her off. For a slightly longer moment, she considered whether she could manage to do the same to him. She imagined the two of them falling, grappling onto each other._

_The moment passed, and nothing happened, though by the look in Kurzfeld's eyes he had been contemplating the same thing._

_"Let's go home," he said._

There was a knock at the door. "Madam Deputy Director?"

Lorraine turned back from contemplating the window, and exactly what she might or might not have done to "deserve" all this. Was it her just reward for having helped to shorten the Cold War? A recognition that her skills and knowledge would be helpful in the new world that was taking shape in its aftermath? Or a way of keeping her under a very close watch indeed? 

"What is it?" she asked.

"The new DGSE liason is here," her secretary said.

"Sure," Lorraine said. "Send him in."

"Actually, ma'am, it's a her," came the reply, but it was rendered pointless by the way Delphine was strutting into the room, not waiting to be ushered in.

"Do have a seat," Lorraine said, giving her secretary a tiny nod to indicate she could leave.

Delphine promptly sat herself in Lorraine's own chair.

"Not that one."

Delphine pouted. "We could share?" She swung back and forth. "It seems large enough, this fancy executive thing. I mean, it'd be a bit of a tight squeeze but I don't think you'd mind that."

"I generally work under the assumption that there are at least half a dozen bugs I don't know about in here. Some of them might not even be American."

"And how many that you do know about?" Delphine asked.

"Well, precisely." She glared at Delphine, who got up with bad grace and perched on the side of the desk instead.

"Quite a promotion you've got there," she said. "Special Liason to the CIA."

"To the office of the Deputy Director (Intelligence), in particular," Delphine said. "Pursuant to our long-term strategic goal of developing closer links."

"By which I assume you mean your bosses know about us." Delphine shrugged; whether that was an admission that she'd told them everything, or a refusal to care if or how they might have found out, she couldn't say. "They think you'll get to me."

That got a smile. "Is it working?"

"Not in the way you're thinking, no."

"Pity," Delphine said. "This would be a very good office for fucking in."

"Let's keep it formal in here, shall we?"

Delphine leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Why, would you come harder if I called you Deputy Director Broughton?"

Lorraine forced herself not to smile at the sudden vivid image that came into her mind.

"Why did you keep the cover name, anyway?" Delphine asked. "Was it just to piss off Six?" She pronounced it the French way, making her erstwhile supposed employers sound even more seedy and disreputable than they really were.

"Would you believe me if I said it was my real name?"

"No," Delphine said. "It sounds so very stuffy and English."

"It's my real name."

"I'm sure you have a birth certificate to go with it. Along with half a dozen others."

"Maybe we should discuss things over dinner," Lorraine said.

"Do you know anywhere that has a good menu?" Delphine asked. "After all, you seemed to know all the right places in Barcelona. I took a menu from that place we went to. I was hoping perhaps I'd learn the secret to making a really hot patatas bravas." She leaned back, looking smug. "And I mean _really_ hot."

Lorraine understood the implication immediately. Kurzfeld had destroyed the menu, microdot and all. The US was against nuclear proliferation, of course, but that didn't mean the CIA was suddenly going to turn around and tidy up the mess left by their decades-long enemies. But it now seemed that Delphine had switched the menus, sneaking around in the earliest hours of the morning to achieve it. Lorraine almost felt proud of her.

In the end she said, "Well, I have to admit you know a thing or two about hot."

"I think dinner is a very good idea," Delphine said. "We can discuss a mutual exchange of knowledge."

With that, Delphine got up. Lorraine genuinely couldn't tell if she was flirting or offering the microdot back.

Well, no, she was definitely flirting. The question was the other thing, and what the price would be. And what she -- what they? -- might do next with it. "You got good at this, didn't you?"

"Yes I did, didn't I?" Delphine said. She turned in the doorway. "But then, I guess I learned by example."


End file.
